Monday 22 August 2005

Just for the fun of it

Who are those people who take pleasure in destroying other people’s property? Who are those people who are, thread by thread, removing the woolly wall covering of the lift in our building? Who are those people who scribbled graffiti on the walls of the prehistoric caves in Lascaux and on the standing stones at Stonehenge so they had to be closed to the public?

Who are those people who slashed my partner’s tyres today? They didn't even stick around to see our reaction. Where's the fun in that?

Who are those people?

They are disgusting, irresponsible vandals. And I'm slapping them all.

Btw. "tyre" is the English English spelling (pneu in French, from the word pneumatique - you may thank me for telling you this one day): I don't want another "nauseous" vs "nauseated" argument. LOL!

13 comments:

  1. Aw, that sucks.

    Our mailbox got trashed in the winter. Kids drive around and decide to run over a mailbox. Then back up, and run over it again. What can I say? They are bored and destructive. Most likely drunk too. Happens a lot on our street.

    Dumb kids!

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  2. The ancient Greeks recognized that there is a death force (Thanatos) at work in the world as well as a life force (Eros). Early psychotherapists named our creative energy associated with this life force *libido*, and our destructive energy that seems to long for death *destrudo*. Some people really do give themselves over to "the dark side". There's a difference, obviously, between the moron who slashed your tires and what we all recognize as the consummate evil of a Hitler, for example - but it's a difference of degree only. The destructive energy is the same. Why are we like this? i don't have an answer.

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  3. I've even heard there are people who take other people's washing and ruin it...

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  4. LOL - uh-oh, lulu - sounds like a domestic dispute :>)

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  5. I am so sorry! Slapping along with you, my dear.

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  6. Thank you for your kind words! This sort of behaviour really depresses me. Perhaps they should bring back military service or something.

    Oh, lulu, that's happened to me too. I was livid. ;-)

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  7. That's so annoying. May I just add a slap for the person who threw a used nappy onto our communal lawn from one of the balconies in my up to now quiet and respectable block.

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  8. Kids are bored. My husband used to be a juvenile delinquent who'd go around moving the stone gnomes in people's yards. Not a mailbox smasher, he says, but he knew a few. It's why young men between the ages of 11 and 22 ought to be shipped off to an island somewhere and quarantined until they become human again.

    As for graffiti in the Lascaux caves, wow, someone did that? It's ironic, because cavewriting is, after all, the oldest graffiti known.

    Reminds me of seeing the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum here. It's a full temple built by Alexander when he conquered Egypt, and when Napoleon's soldiers showed up, they carved their names and dates of their arrival all over it. Now their graffiti has become part of the history of the building! Punks.

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  9. Oh, I can’t believe anyone would do such a disgusting thing, GSE. Some people belong in a pigsty.

    Tania, I have a problem because I don’t understand the concept of “being bored”. There is so much to do; so much to learn; so many things to discover. But it’s been proven that the adolescent brain does not function in the same way as an adult one: kids who previously were sweet and sensitive suddenly become incapable of recognizing a human emotion, of experiencing empathy. The entire world becomes a puzzling place, so I expect it’s not surprising they behave the way they do. As you say, they should be isolated until they're fit to be talked to again.

    Surely, those wonderful animals so lovingly painted on the walls of Lascaux were not graffiti: they were art – not quite the same thing. It was possible to see them until about 15 years ago.

    I love your story about Napoleon’s troops. :-)

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  10. They should be hanged, drawn and quartered. Or caned (like that kid in Singapore).

    The little bastards who do get caught need to be punished as a lesson to others. The excuse that "they're just kids" is UNACCEPTABLE. When ARE they supposed to learn what is/isn't acceptable? If not now, when?

    A combination of boredom, lack of discipline and disrespect for others' property is usually responsible for this type of behavior. Add alcohol to the mix (not always), and it becomes lethal.

    Sorry this happened to you.

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  11. Well, I have a certain sympathy for some graffiti art, because in NYC, there's simply so much of it that inevitably among the snotnosed jerks who just want to deface things are lurking some Basquiats who make surfaces beautiful. I've seen "graffiti" that took my breath away. It's rare, but when it happens, I have difficulty condemning it, even if I know it's vandalism. It's like the way I feel about buskers in the subway. Mostly I want to slap them all, if not worse (particularly those drummers who always show up on my platform at rush hour—who needs DRUMMERS pounding away at top volume yards from your ears after a full day of work on a crowded train platform?), but occasionally there's one of such heartbreaking talent that I throw money in the hat without hesitation.

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  12. so sorry to hear this. Its such a hurtful and cowardly form of violence.

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  13. Thanks, T and L! Years ago, I left my bicycle in the rack at the bottom of the communal garden and found it completely dismantled - everything that could be removed had been removed. I felt sick. I lived in a very "bourgeois" block of flats in Notting Hill Gate. It can happen anywhere.

    Tania, I quite like buskers. We have very few here; the whole thing is strictly regulated: they can only perform on specially designed platforms. What I don't like is buskers who hold passengers hostage on trains (like in the métro in Paris). It's very annoying; luckily, it's a rare occurrence here.

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